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Moses....
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Moses Holding
The Tablets
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The birth of Moses occurred at a time when the
Egyptian Pharaoh had commanded that all male children born to
Hebrew captives should be killed. The Torah leaves the identity of this Pharaoh
unstated, but he is widely believed to be Ramses II; other, earlier
pharaohs have also been suggested including a Hyksos pharaoh or one
shortly after the Hyksos had been expelled.
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Jochebed, the wife (and paternal aunt) of the Levite
Amram, bore a son, and kept him concealed for three months. When she could
keep him hidden no longer, rather than deliver him to be killed she set him
adrift on the Nile river in an ark of bulrushes. The daughter of Pharaoh
discovered the baby and adopted him as her son, and named him
"Moses". |
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When Moses was grown to manhood, he went one day to see
how it fared with his brethren, bondmen to the Egyptians. Seeing an
Egyptian
maltreating a Hebrew, he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand,
supposing that no one who would be disposed to reveal the matter knew of it.
The next day, seeing two Hebrews quarreling, he endeavored to separate them,
whereupon the Hebrew who was wronging his brother taunted
Moses with slaying
the Egyptian. |
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Moses Statue made of
Ivory
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Moses soon discovered from a higher source that the
affair was known, and that Pharaoh was likely to put him to death for it;
he therefore made his escape to the Sinaitic Peninsula and settled with
Hobab, or Jethro, priest of Midian, whose daughter Zipporah he in due time
married. There he sojourned forty years, following the occupation of a
shepherd, during which time his son Gershom was born (Exodus 2:11-22). |
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